Headin’ to Dutchfest

B.C. rock band Head of the Herd lands onstage at the Bible Hill venue Sunday

B.C. rock band Head of the Herd founders Neu Mannas and Clayton Frank bring the band to this weekend’s Dutch Mason Blues Festival at the Truro Raceway & Exhibition Grounds in Bible Hill, Friday to Sunday. (CONTRIBUTED)

By the time B.C. rock band Head of the Herd arrives in Bible Hill for the Dutch Mason Blues Festival on Sunday it’ll be one well-travelled act.

The quintet is hitting three festivals in three days, from B.C.’s Squamish Valley Music Festival on Friday to the TD Kitchener Blues Festival Saturday and, finally, Dutchfest.

But as the B.C. band’s name suggests, it doesn’t hurt to have a bit of attitude when you walk into these kinds of situations and make it work to your advantage.

“With a festival crowd, especially when you’re not THE headliner, you’ve really got to step your game up, because you’re there to win fans and you’re there to convince people that they showed up early for a reason,” says Mannas, just before heading to another outdoor event in the Okanagan Valley.

“Honestly, I love these crowds, because you get put in front of more people than you can fit in a nightclub, and they’re all there just to have a good time and listen to music. It’s really fun, engaging with them and just playing your music.”

Listening to Head of the Herd’s second album By This Time Tomorrow, recorded with Rage Against the Machine and Gloryhound’s producer Garth (GGGarth) Richardson and Finger Eleven’s Rick Jackett and James Black, it doesn’t take long to realize that this is a band meant to be heard live.

With a groove as thick as molasses, driving rhythmic swagger and a truckload of vocal personality, the band is designed to capture the crowd’s attention.

A recent review of a Head of the Herd performance at Edgefest in Toronto likened Mannas’s stage presence to classic David Bowie, although when pressed the musician says he looks to the passion of Ray Charles, the showmanship of James Brown, and the intensity of Trent Reznor for inspiration.

That’s setting up a lot of expectation, but Mannas says he and Frank put the bulk of their energy into their songwriting, with an emphasis on straightforward, gimmick-free material.

That doesn’t mean they can’t sweeten the sound a little bit, like adding Frank’s old pal Jasmin Parkin, from Vancouver’s indie pop outfit Mother Mother, to a couple of songs on By This Time Tomorrow, including the title track.

“When we were doing demos, and she came in to sing on Don’t Think You Will she had one foot out the door when I said, ‘Hold on, I think there’s maybe one more tune we could turn into something,’,” Mannas says. “At that point, By This Time Tomorrow wasn’t written as a duet. It was a one-way song, but if it were conversational, then it could be super effective, because it’s not (about) just me (messing) up — it’s me making mistakes and her wagging a finger at me. And now everyone can relate to that song, because everybody’s been on one of those sides of a relationship before.”

Mannas cites the “don’t leave me” chorus in By This Time Tomorrow as an example of Head of the Herd’s “deadly personal” style of songwriting, taken to the point where it might be “too close for comfort.”

He prefers to think that it’s moments like that where Head of the Herd crosses the line from rock into blues, with that deep-seated, soul-sick feeling, and a blast from Frank’s harmonica for good measure.

“People think that blues is a dirty word, they hear it and assume we’re just doing the Stevie Ray Vaughan thing and singing different words over a 12-bar blues, 10 times in a row,” he sighs.

“When we say we’re inspired by the blues, we think of people like Muddy Waters as a forefather, but the feeling is mainly in the lyrical content, and maybe some of the scales that we write the tunes in. Blues rock is thought of as being guitar-centric, but our first record (On the House) is kind of an anti-guitar record, being really heavy on bass and organ and choir backup vocals.

“The new one has a lot more guitar in it, but you can tell I was raised a bass player because I’m basically playing bass lines on guitar. I think that gives us an edge and makes us sound different from people who are doing the same kind of thing.”